I was 14 years old when Pakistan lost the 1999 Cricket World Cup final match to Australia. As a die-hard supporter of the Pakistan cricket team, the loss was both shocking and humiliating for me.
I did not eat for the next two days. My friends and I, after that defeat, had started discussing the idea of banning Pakistan’s cricket team. We would argue that the cricket administration and players were wasting the nation’s time and resources.
It was not just us who would come up with those “silly ideas,” but other Pakistani fans shared those sentiments in large.
There were some who actually attacked players, their families and their homes. Many Indian cricket friends also met the same fate after losing the 2003 and 2007 Cricket World Cups. Their homes were attacked and they were confined to their houses.
Fans taking their devotion to the extreme isn’t just an American phenomenon. It happens in other countries as well. The relationship between cricket and hockey players in Pakistan is paradoxical. There is thrill, excitement, love, hate, belief and mistrust.
Fans in South Asia give their best players (in almost every game but particularly in cricket and hockey) the status of gods. Players are humans no more: They cannot lose a game; they cannot perform badly.
The fans do not look at the performance of their players with a human lens. Rather, if players fail, the fans would believe that they intentionally underperformed. So the careers of sportsmen at large depend on the mood and perception of their fans about their talents.
The players have to go through mental and physical torture every now and then. The perceptions of fans about their “stars”/players are largely ingrained in the local cultures, where people are always looking for a hero to resolve all their issues. Defeat is unacceptable to the fans. They just want to win, and win big.
However, no one discusses the administrative shortcomings of the sporting bodies in Pakistan. No fan cares about the malpractices and politicking between the team management and the players. All these fans know is that gods are playing from their side. If those gods fail, then according to the fans they are worse than the devil. Recently a Pakistani hockey player got so dejected by the fans’ criticism of the players rather than the system that he resigned from the team.
There are, however, some players who achieved fame within a day and are still highly liked by fans. Those were the players who managed to perform in a match against archrivals of either hockey or cricket teams.
For example, there is Asif, a cricket player who helped Pakistan win a match against an archrival Indian cricket team. His track record was really bad. He was involved in doping cases. He had fights with his teammates and was banned from cricket for five years for fixing matches.
But the guy still maintains a huge fan base. All his supporters would not believe that he has committed so many crimes. They won’t believe that at all. The fans would consider all the crimes he did as a conspiracy against their beloved player. Due to a huge fan base, he appears in advertisements and is a face of cricket in the media and public.
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A player needs to have luck, performance in a single match, and a bit of PR skills to get the status of a “god” in South Asia. However, even if you are performing well for a long time and you failed to perform well against a South Asian neighbor, you might lose all your fans and money, because advertisers won’t invest in you.
Sayyed Shah is the assistant news editor at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at assistant-news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @mianfawadshah.
